Making the case for open access books

Open book: new publishing models are spreading from journals to academic monographs. Photograph: Jan Stromme/Getty Images

A policy requiring open access to academic books? Surely that's asking for trouble? After all, it was only a few months ago that many humanities researchers were up in arms when Research Councils UK (RCUK) implemented its new policy on open access to journal articles. Although such measures are broadly accepted in the sciences, the RCUK policy was criticised by the Royal Historical Society, among others, for being a blunt instrument, insensitive to the differences that mark out historians from histologists.

Given the anguish that RCUK's policy caused, the announcement last week that the Wellcome Trust – a major funder of biomedical research – has now extended its open access policy to include books and book chapters might seem a little, well, insensitive. After all, the Trust's long-standing policy on open access to journal articles was seen by many as having beaten the path for RCUK's approach. So why books, and why now?

The answer is that far from being a science-led initiative in which humanities are collateral damage, open access to books matters precisely because the humanities matter. While much of the research the Wellcome Trust funds is in biomedical science, where peer-reviewed journal articles are the primary means of disseminating new ideas, the Trust also supports research in the burgeoning field of medical humanities. These comprise a variety of disciplines that explore the social, historical and cultural dimensions of science and medicine. They reveal facets that are often ignored by the biomedical sciences alone, and offer ways to enrich our understanding of health and disease.

As with the humanities more broadly, it is often through books, rather than journal articles, that this research is shared. Extending open access policies to books is an acknowledgement that if this research is worth funding, then it's worth making the outputs accessible to all. This is particularly important in the medical humanities, a field which exists to create meaningful conversation between disciplines. Why shouldn't a clinician know about and be inspired by a historian or philosopher, just as the latter can already keep up with current biomedicine through the success of open access journals?

Of course, it can be argued that there is already a perfectly good system for people to get hold of books, by buying them or borrowing them as they have done for centuries. Moreover there are plenty of books produced by academics that are already widely read. So it's important to note that the Wellcome Trust's policy isn't intended to cover all books. If a researcher wants to write something with popular appeal for a general audience or a textbook for classroom use, the Trust will be fully supportive and the open access policy need not apply.

These types of books reach the audiences they are designed for. But scholarly monographs often don't. You won't find them in your local bookshop or public library, and if you find them online the prices will make your eyes water. Even university libraries are forced to make hard decisions about which of these books to buy. Too often, good research goes unread because too few institutions can afford the price, while the precarious economics creates the risk that in future even more research will go unpublished.

This does not mean that making such a policy work is straightforward. Researchers worry that it may restrict their choice of publishers, or that paying the price of open access will eat into their research grants. These are reasonable concerns, but neither presents an insurmountable obstacle – indeed, the Trust's policy is framed so as to overcome them both. We are providing dedicated funding to meet the costs of open access book publishing, over and above the grants we give, so that the resources available to our researchers are not eroded. This funding, too, creates a powerful incentive for publishers to offer an open access route for books, as it has already for journals.

Many publishers, ranging from newish start-ups like Open Book Publishers to established companies such as Palgrave Macmillan and Manchester University Press, already make monographs open access. Many more can now be expected to follow suit. If they want to publish Wellcome Trust-funded researchers, who are among the leading voices in their fields, they will have to offer an open access option, and they will be paid by the Trust for the value they bring to the process. Some flexibility is also needed in terms of licences, and in contrast to journal articles the Trust will accept less liberal licences for open access books to help publishers develop sustainable and cost-effective business models.

The money being made available may raise its own concerns. Unlike journal articles, there are few benchmark costs of producing an open access monograph or book chapters. Inevitably costs will vary to the extent that the length and format of monographs vary, which is to say substantially. This fluidity may raise concerns among academics that publication fees could be uncoupled from the cost of production, diverting unreasonable sums of money from researchers to publishers.

Ensuring transparency of costs will help to prevent this, making it possible to calculate a reasonable scale of costs based on the components of the editorial, production and marketing process. Publishers, researchers and funders will all have a role to play in this process. At its heart, however, is a simple principle that everyone should have access to the results of publicly or charitably funded research to read, use and build upon, and that this principle isn't restricted to the sciences.

The humanities matter, and books matter. Through open access, they can be made to matter to a wider audience than ever before.

Simon Chaplin is a historian of medicine and head of the Wellcome Library at the Wellcome Trust

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